Most popular chocolate products are bar chocolate and cover chocolate for coating confectionery. However, in addition to them, there has been known the so-called plastic chocolate which is produced by providing a design to chocolate after cooling and solidification thereof and is mainly used for decoration of confectionery and cakes as an ornament.
For plastic chocolate, moldability and plasticity are required and, in order to provide chocolate with such properties, in general, a water-containing material such as a liquid sugar is added. However, chocolate using a liquid sugar has an undesirable flavor and mouthfeel and a fat blooming type appearance is caused due to evaporation of water during storage with time. In addition, there is a problem that chocolate becomes sticky.
As another method for providing chocolate with plasticity, the addition of a liquid oil to a fat ingredient of chocolate has been employed. However, there is a problem that, for example, formation of cracking or break of chocolate is caused even by application of a slight distortion to chocolate after solidification thereof and it is difficult to provide chocolate with sufficient plasticity by this method.
Furthermore, in JP-A 5-211841, chocolate is provided with plasticity after solidification by addition of cacao butter and soybean oil to a di-saturated-monolinoleate. However, the chocolate has insufficient shape retention at 26.degree. C. or higher because of the addition of a liquid oil to the middle melting point fraction and is sticky and therefore it is necessary to use a high melting point ingredient together with these materials.
Thus, fats and chocolate having excellent plasticity with free from stickiness has not been reported heretofore in the prior art.